08-29-2018, 11:48 AM
Cheap grace is a mistake. I find it hard to believe that God would damn to Hell some unobjectionable person (except for rejecting Jesus) who died in a Nazi murder camp for being Jewish, and then forgiving some Nazi war criminal who 'gave his soul to Jesus' while standing on the platform of the gallows for putting Zyklon-B into the gas chamber.
So is Calvinist predestination, the idea that if you are destined to Heaven, then wonderful things will happen all your life. No -- one is simply lucky or good at what one does.
Maybe I give God less credit than I might, but unforgivable sins, like many committed by Nazis, Stalinists, Ba'athists, and ISIS exist. I certainly don't want to go where the Nazis are.
So is Calvinist predestination, the idea that if you are destined to Heaven, then wonderful things will happen all your life. No -- one is simply lucky or good at what one does.
Maybe I give God less credit than I might, but unforgivable sins, like many committed by Nazis, Stalinists, Ba'athists, and ISIS exist. I certainly don't want to go where the Nazis are.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.